Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 399: Heaven's Gate Part III - Burrito Heaven

Episode Date: February 1, 2020

On the conclusion to our series on Heaven's Gate, we cover the lead-up to the suicides, the suicides themselves, and the immediate aftermath, as well as the myriad of exit statements that the members of the cult left behind. 

Hey everyone, Marcus here to tell you more about our move to Spotify. This show, along with all your other LPN favorites, is going exclusive to Spotify on Valentine's Day 2020. That means you'll only be able to listen to this episode, future episodes, and our entire back catalog of shows over on Spotify starting on February 14th. Spotify accounts all man, they're free and they're easy to create. You can listen to all of our shows on Spotify right now and you can download episodes for offline listening with your free account. Everything is free. The Last Podcast Network and all your favorite music in one place, what are you waiting for? Listen to Last Podcast Network, free on Spotify.

Okay. My pussy fell off. All right. Welcome to the Last Podcast of the Left, everyone. I am Ben looking at Marcus, hanging out with Hollywood Henry Zabrowski. For some reason, T has just become the female version of Cartman. I don't know when that happened. Tell you what, it's not how I was sleeping in my sleeping pod and I got up to go take a shit and I forgot all shit anymore, but I slipped on my pussy and I fell in my space closet. Really? You slipped on your own vagina?

Yeah, it's a crazy set of circus things. Also, that is the same voice you do for Jackie. I just have a feeling you have a type when you think of that voice and I don't know if it's good or not, but if it's Jackie that you're thinking of, it's beautiful. You're an intelligent young woman. Very intelligent. Listen to her on page seven, of course. All right, everyone. It is time for Part 3 of Heaven's Gate. I'm gonna say probably only gets worse from year for them. Oh yeah. So when we last left Heaven's Gate, the year was 1994 and they had just purchased the book that contained the instructions that they would eventually follow to commit mass suicide three years later.

So if you ever sat down to write a book and you say, hey, who is this for? There's a book out there for every book. Yep, absolutely. And of course the last podcast on the last podcast on the left book tour will be happening in April. We've all received the copies of our book. It is awesome. So we are very excited for all you to grip it in your hands in April. Nice plug, you fucking ghouls. Yeah, you fucking... Why did it? He's the one that did the... Why? I can't plug the book. All our every single meeting we have with management is more plugs, more plugs. Ben Kissel does his job perfectly and Marcus calls me a ghoul, which is nicer than a goon. But why can't I get any respect over here? My name's Ben Kissel. You ready to get rid of that

vessel? Why don't you buy a last book on the left because the best part and the end of it is got this whole recipe of a super sleepy pudding. You are all mean to me. You're being mean to me. Check that out with your Ben Kissel bingo. One of the important things to remember about this group is that they stayed in heavy seclusion for the last 21 years of their existence. Between 1976 and 1997, Heaven's Gate emerged only five times for the purposes of proselytizing and recruiting. In 1988, they sent out a booklet called The 88 Update to New Age Centers Across America. In 1992, they produced and broadcast Beyond Human, which was the 12-part series that outlined their entire belief system in excruciating detail. You say detail, but I'm going to tell you,

I didn't hear a single detail. Interesting. I heard a lot of gobbledygook. I heard a lot of vagaries, but if you're looking for long, boring vagaries, Beyond Humans, that is the series you're looking for. It sounds like the manual on how to put together IKEA furniture. Yeah, not even any words. It is hard to do, isn't it? A book, April 20th. Feel free to come out to wherever we are. Then, in 1993 and 1994, they placed nationwide newspaper advertisements explicitly saying that their ultimate goal was to leave their human bodies behind and soon, and anyone who wanted to join better hurry up and hop on board. And out of all those outreach programs that they tried over the years, the most successful one by far was the one that heavily implied that

suicide was in their near future. Really? No. Dog meat. Dog meat. You didn't listen. It is not suicide. Suicide is staying on earth. Oh, is that right? Suicide is staying on earth. It was never committing suicide. They were releasing their vehicle. And when you use the term releasing their vehicle, I think they got at least three of those people because they thought it was one of those big explosion groups where everybody like shits in the soup and spreads it all over each other. And they were like, oh, I'd love to release my vehicle over a bunch of people laying on the ground. Wow, get your dookie mats out, folks. Well, while the others amounted to no more than one or two members with each go, the suicide ads got 10. Wow. Whoa, mama, that's a lot. Compared to one

or two, tens a lot. Absolutely. And all of those people stayed until the bitter end in March of 1997. Well, those to me are the saddest, obviously. The ones with the 20 years into the group, I almost understand. We'll go deeper into this in this episode because, I mean, you've just given over your whole life. I listened to one guy that got out in a documentary called The Day After that said, interestingly, it was easy for them to give up their lives a second time because they already gave up their lives once. They already gave up everything 25 years ago. I would love to see the person a day after just wipe their brow with the back of their hand and just be like, got out of that, huh? Like, at that point, you're just like, wow, that was a weird 20 years.

But I actually feel like this is where the cult gets also very nefarious. You can't just go courting people who are suicidal. What? Were they suicidal? Yes, because they said suicide. Well, that sounds good. They did not say suicide technically, but it was going somewhere else, ending it all going to another plane. You see, what a lot of the members near the end were saying concerning this world was that they felt completely and totally alienated from even the basic concepts of modern living with one member describing Earth as quote, this space alien hell. I am sick and tired of not getting my bye one get one swim jams at the 7 11 in this space. I was told there was a Bogo special. I haven't gotten any Bogo yet.

Well, Heaven's Gate reinforced this notion. They were not the problem. Everyone else was. They were the smart ones, the people who figured it all out because they were also goddamn smart. They got to live in alien heaven while the rest of us languished in Luciferian hell. This is just such a classic dude who started listening to info wars went home for Thanksgiving, started screaming at the table and just be like, you're the ones disrupting this dinner. You're the ones ruining Thanksgiving. Just some more sweet potatoes. Matthew moved to New York this year. How's New York? I'm going to be in theater. You're not talking about New York anymore.

I think what's important to remember is that these people already felt this way before joining the group. I think what Heaven's Gate did for most of them was given permission to pack it in. However, even though it was a choice for these people to join this group and live the life of a Heaven's Gate member, I am in no way absolving Marshall Applewhite of instigating the whole thing because apparently I have to say that. I thought you people knew me well enough to know that I'm not on Marshall Applewhite's side. Marcus, we are dealing with powers that are bigger than all of us. We're dealing with Marshall Applewhite and the cult mentality. And as we were very concerned about Henry during our Scientology series, almost our Um Shinrikyo series, but he

did not like to eat cabbage. I don't like cabbage. I don't like cabbage, so you're out of that cult. But this cult, the way that you described it, I think it's important that you clarify you don't like Marshall Applewhite. You talked about it a little bit like an office crush. You weren't going to do anything about it, but when you're in the office, it's kind of fun to live a little side life pretending. Some of the ideas are attractive. You have an office wife and that's okay. Well, most likely many of these people would not have killed themselves had they never met Tee and Doe. Some might have even found happiness, who the fuck knows? And I want to make absolutely clear that Marshall Applewhite was fantastically wrong to push these people where he did. But the

big question I think we've been trying to answer with Heaven's Gate during our research and in the myriad of behind the scenes conversation that me and Henry have had is whether or not Marshall Applewhite is indeed evil. He was certainly narcissistic and megalomaniacal, but remember these people, including him, were for the most part true believers. I guess a better question is this. Is it evil to lead people to suicide if none of you believe that it's suicide? Right. My main thrust is that the only way Marshall Applewhite is not evil is if he is an alien. If it is entirely real, if the entire thing is real, then that is the only thing that truly absolves him. I think towards the end, he could have released them. I think he could have

released them forever or he could have just done it himself, but he doubles down in a way. Yeah. Yeah. He shortens the timeline at the very end and you can see it in the quality of the videos as they go that he has, he has fully reeled them in. If the UFO showed up, fucking, I guess I'll cut, I don't want to cut my balls off. Well, you didn't have to. We'll talk about the ball cutting here in a second. You didn't have to cut the balls off. I know, but it's an option. I will be the Chief Robert Kissell here. Justice Roberts is the joke there. The defense or the prosecution? Marcus, you're the defense. Henry, you're the prosecution. Marcus, cut your balls off right now. Marcus, will you do it? Objection. Why? Objection. I love his balls.

The prosecution wins. I love his balls for him. I believe that Marshall Applewhite was guilty because I believe that he knew he was not an alien because aliens do not have YouTube channels. You didn't have a YouTube channel. You sent out videotapes. This is 1996. There was no, 1996, 1997. There was no YouTube then. That's even worse. He put it all the way to videotape. Well, we'll definitely explore this notion as we go through this episode, but I think the biggest difference between this cult and the others we've covered, like, say, like Jonestown, like, I think the people at Jonestown definitely murdered by Jim Jones. You know, these people, all they really wanted was like a new perspective in life. That's not in dispute, but the assertion

that Marshall Applewhite murdered 38 people is in dispute. For me, the difference is this. While the people of Jonestown went down to Guyana looking for a new way to live, many of the people joining Heaven's Gate were just looking for a new way to die. A new way to die is to shoot yourself up the asshole. That's not a new way to die. I have not heard that. I died 15 years ago doing that. You can find me at most water fountains. I would say this. Now we have this society, right? I don't know. I don't remember the name of the chick. She just got out of jail for making that guy jump off the, uh, the balcony there or whatever, the parking garage. We have this society now where we're starting to convict people of driving people to suicide. Don't you think that Marshall

Applewhite, he was the Freddy Krueger at Nightmare Elm Street too, driving the bus over the cliff? Was he not? I mean, yes, he was. So doesn't that make him guilty? I mean, that's the thing. We're not necessarily talking about guilty or not guilty. We're talking more evil. Evil. Like, was he responsible? Absolutely. Okay. But was he evil? When you've become the new adoptive father of a gaggle of goobers and you, you have gotten them, right? Now they've given up their whole lives to you. Right. They look at you like the way they look at him with their wet eyes and their drawn faces. I mean, that's got to be a lot. But at some point I'd be like, get away from me if I was a cult leader, but I'm not a cult leader. I would look for people with more ambition. More Zazz.

Yes. I wouldn't possess. But when Marshall Applewhite looks at the sea of dewey-eyed people and they've given up everything, if he was truly a responsible human being, he probably would have been like, get out of here. Or we would have been here for 40 years. We'll just stay here. We'll die here. We'll cleanse our bodies and then either the UFO will show up or we will, as each time we naturally pass, it's our vehicles giving up and your soul goes up to heaven. That's how you get the money because you got a customer for life. You have somebody that is hanging out, helping you pay rent, doing stuff. It's a smarter move and you get to live in beautiful San Diego. And if you rolled it out the way that Obama rolled out Obamacare with like, if you like

your insurance company, you can keep it. If you was like, if you like your balls, you can keep your balls. Everyone who liked their balls did keep their balls. But they were told not to like their balls. Yeah, they were told not to like their balls, but there were some people who still liked their balls a little bit too much. Don't listen, balls. Don't listen. They're just being mean to you. Don't listen, balls. And we'll explore this question like later on in the episode like even more. But let's get back to the story of Heaven's Gate. So in 1995, the group started a business called Higher Source Contract Services, which provided computer programming and website design for the newly popular worldwide web. Whoa, I can't wait to serve. Now the business website

itself, which can be found on the internet archive, looks pretty much how you'd expect a 1995 website to look complete with a tiny animated Netscape Now 3.0 gift and a visitor counter at the bottom of the screen that's forever frozen at 4,525 visitors. I miss that so much. As far as what websites they built, they did one for a bootleg compilation of Madonna's early work before she was a pop star, cleverly titled Prima Donna. They are funny. I'm going to kill them myself. I just got it. They did one for the San Diego Polo Club and one for the film distributor who was responsible for the Brave Little Toaster movies. I don't. Okay. One thing about a website designer is that you put them on a timeline and then they go off and they build your website and sometimes

they don't come back and timely that. This is a problem with freelance work, right? When you're hiring somebody to do freelance. But how do you know when you hire somebody in the middle of it, they're going to go fucking commit suicide in a group? Can you imagine? No, no. No one who stares at computers all day long commit suicide. They're the happiest people in the world. Well, besides just website design, Heaven's Gate also did graphic design, boasting that, quote, higher source can go from cool to corporate like a chameleon. Their logo is the Green Bay Packers logo. They just stole it from a national football team standing on the shoulders of giants. But also, do chameleons go from cool to corporate? If they are hanging out at like a hip Williamsburg

bar one second and then going to midtown the next. Oh, yeah, they're cool to corporate. Yeah, chameleon is whatever environment they're in. Whoa, that's cool. And corporate. I just see a gecko with sunglasses and then he puts a little blazer on it. It's cute. However, Heaven's Gate was not very good at graphic or website design. They're not even good nerds. Yeah, even by the low standards of the time. Wow. Yeah, someone in like 1997, a web expert looked at their web pages, talked to CNN and said, these guys are amateurs. Wow. Come on guys, let's not roast them, they're immediate. They're fucking dead. Come on web designers. I know there's a lot of snark in that world. There is. But in the same year that they launched Hire Source, they also decided to up the ante when it

came to how far adherents were willing to go when it came to following the ways of Marshall Applewhite. Finally, we can talk about the fucking castration. Yeah. 1995 was the year Applewhite decided to castrate himself. Now, as we said in the first episode, one of the major misconceptions about Heaven's Gate is that each and every male member was castrated. I heard that each and every male member was castrated. That's what you heard. It's a misconception. That's what I heard. My mom called me a misconception. In reality, seven members, including Applewhite, had the procedure done. But if we're talking percentages here, that means that almost half of the men voluntarily followed Applewhite's words when he said that castration was the way to go.

It's a lot. Now it has a, see, that has a far more sinister connotation than just six. When you start really looking at the numbers of groups, right, when you look at the breakdown of it, been like half those boys went down to Mexico and they came back to Juevos less. Wow. Here is a clip of one of the members talking just before the suicides about why he went through with the neutering. Oh, oh, neutering. My God, you're a real Bob Barker over here. Hey, their words, not mine. Make sure to get your call. Make sure to get your call, members spading neuter. I don't know if you remember Do talking about that some students had chosen, had proven to him that they desired to have their vehicles neutered. And I'm one of those

students that did that. And I can't tell you how free that has made me feel. I've been here long enough from the time I had that operation to know the freedom that it offers me. And I'm just so thankful for that opportunity. And in all reality, I can't see that this next step that I'm prepared to take and looking forward to taking is anything more than a clinical operation and having seen the benefit that the the neutering has had for my consciousness for my ability to grow and be closer to my older member that I can't and full I can't see any other way. But to fully expect that laying down this vehicle is going to be anything but great for me. Oh, man. Well, you know, I guess I don't know probably not wrong about feeling free. Yeah. Can you imagine what it

would be like to live a day? I mean, like, because I mean, I can't separate because it's just like sometimes I wonder if my if my blood is semen. Like, I don't know, like, it's a thing where I can't. I don't know what that would be like to have all that time. I mean, I'm all that mental energy. I'm on Lexapro and Well Butcher and I haven't had a natural boner in 10 years. I mean, some of these people really did struggle with this. Like, remember Sawyer that wrote the book, like he left because he could not go through with the neutering, nor could he resist the urge to masturbate any longer. So he just left just so he could go jerk off. And then he said, I can't, I can't do this. It's like you're denying every single thing that comes natural to your biological

body and acting like that the problem is your brain and that your body is the problem. We're actually that it's not it's what your body is supposed to do. It's supposed to be horny or it's supposed to want to come sometimes. And then there are people that are asexual don't have these feelings. But someone like this has to go so far as to neuter themselves to not feel these feelings. I feel like it's a bit much. Honestly, he may just be asexual from the start and doesn't really mess him to begin with. But he seems to me like someone who needs to be deprogrammed. Well, because he is in deep. He was I read some he was apparently a very sweet man. I'm sure he sounds very nice. Yeah, he was a very but one thing that I noticed that makes it sadder. Yeah. One thing

that I noticed about this guy and Marshall Appalight and one of the others that was also neutered, the crazy eyes. Oh, this guy on the video, he has his eyes wide, just like Marshall Appalight does on the last few videos, because Marshall Appalight does not have those big, huge wide eyes on the beyond human videos. He looks somewhat normal. I mean, it's a terrible haircut, but he still looks somewhat normal. But when you get to the 9796 videos, that's when the eyes get really fucking big. So I wonder if there is a connection between the neutering and the big eyes. I wonder if there's some old timey science where the balls weigh down the island. I don't know. Yeah, ball gravity. I don't know if this applies, but Puffin has been neutered and

he never blinks. Yeah, that's so. I think that they are, I mean, they're deep, they're deep in there. They're deep. Yeah, at this point, they are, they are, they are far, they are far along. If you're willing to go get castrated for your, for your leader, if you believe you're doing this correctly, if you believe that you are serving heaven by doing this. Yeah, I think that you're going to have a, you're going to be a court low. Yeah. Well, as far as how they did it, Appalight and six others use the same option that so many Americans have used for voluntary surgery on sexual organs throughout the 20th century. A waffle maker. Mexico. Yeah, they went to Mexico, presumably Tijuana, probably Tijuana. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Now for the other six dudes who

got the snip, things went off without a hitch, but Appalight surgery was totally botched and it was said that his Tijuana hatchet job had quote, unpleasant and long lasting consequences. Oh my God, we added extra balls. That is the opposite of what I wanted, sir. Apparently he was just in pain for the rest of his life, which you know, it was about a year after that, but yeah, for, well, no, two years. Yeah, two years of constant pain in the gonadial areas. He's a real bill buckner. Unforced error. Did not have to be in constant pain. Okay. Soon after Heaven's Gate made their first overtures into establishing a semi permanent compound. In June of 1995, they bought an abandoned summer camp near Monzano, New Mexico under the name David Van Cinderan.

This 40 acre property was supposed to be used as a quote unquote launch pad where they would build what's known as an earth ship, which is, at its core, just a structure made out of old tires and dirt. They just did the help the Convents montage from Sister Act two. That's literally all they did. They just went and they just piled tires together. Just all you know, we're going to space, y'all. Going to space. Just imagine all the meth dealers watching them over the mountain being like, these goddamn space people are gonna fucking get there before we do. I think you're already there, man. They are supposed to be smart, right? Well, I mean, but they got this idea from a book, Ben. It's just rubber tires. The book, the idea came from a book. Heath Cliff and his gang would do

a better job. This is technically a bit heading towards Oscar the Grouch territory. Well, the book was earth ship volume one build your own, which said that structures made from old tires could provide heat, cooking, water, electricity and sewage treatment without any outside help. It is, I would say it is definitely the idea of a person who thinks they're a lot smarter than they really are. I believe it person who thinks they're very clever. But unfortunately, the weather turned cold before the cult could finish their tire city and they abandoned the project. Instead, they went to California and rented a house in one of the ritziest sections in San Diego. Hold on a second. They went from failed tire house to ritzy Los Angeles mansion.

One of the nicest neighborhoods in all of San Diego and San Diego. Yeah. And so one of the nicest neighborhoods in California. Wow. Yeah. Well, this house in Rancho Santa Fe would be heaven's gates home for the next two years. And it would be the house where the cult would end. But they still kept the property in New Mexico for a bit by another year. And on that property was a warehouse. And in that warehouse was a small stockpile of guns. But compared to say the branch Davidians or even my own goddamn family. Now that I think about it, this quote on quote stockpile was hardly enough to bring down the wrath of the government. How was your family going to commit murder or suicide if they don't have guns market? I'm not saying anything. But I'm just saying my

family, if you put my dads and my brothers and my nephews guns all together, it's going to be a lot more guns than what heavens gate had. So you're just going to tell the ATF right now over the podcast airwaves that your brother has enough guns to be branch Davidians? Not at all. I didn't see even come close to saying that. I'm just saying they had more guns than heavens gate had. Okay. It's a collection. It's a collection of guns. Okay. Yeah. It's a difference. Yeah. It's a big, huge, gigantic difference. All legally obtained weapons, sir. Don't look at me with that eye. I'm not arresting you. I don't really understand how they thought that they would do any sort of damage against the ATF or the US government. These people get bruised if you

threw a fucking grape at them. They're all so skinny and slight and all drawn and shit. How the fuck do they get a fire and AK 47? Well, why did they have guns at all? Well, I think that's the thing. We'll get a little, we'll get into why exactly they got the guns here in a second. But really, like all they managed to get was a couple of assault rifles, six handguns, and even then all of those guns just ended up in a storage locker in San Diego, presumably because nobody knew or wanted to know how to use them. Really, Apple white's main focus during this time was on himself. By 1995, Apple white had fully convinced his followers that he was alien Jesus living in Apple white skin and that coming to earth had been a terrible burden

that he'd endured for 20 years, ever since he'd come down from space heaven in 1975. Oh, I went to a Burger King the other day and it was, it wasn't good, huh? You see him fall apart within the videos. You watch Beyond Human, he's fairly relaxed. He eyes almost normal. Bull haircut, looking stupid, saying, saying dumb shit, bad teacher, right? But healthy looking. Then he has the 95 videos. There was 95 and there was a 96 video, right? They came out still vaguely healthy looking. It's got the shaved head, eyes getting bigger, starting to sound a little crazier. But the final video when he starts to put out the chair for tea to sit next to him, which is now a whole new elevated. Oh my God. He is now ramp this up.

At this point, he is truly become Jesus, Marshall Apple white and he's so ready to go. And it's interesting to see him develop and shrink and what he does to these people because he started playing up the burden more and more about how like, and that you are all, you are all a part of my burden. Right. Watching and teaching you is also a burden because I want to go to heaven. So he pulled the Clint Eastwood from the RNC in 2012, when he put the fake chair on the stage and pretended Obama was sitting in it. Oh, that was sad. Just if you have a chair next to you and no one is in it, get rid of it and let someone is sitting in it, then you don't need another chair by you or put a mannequin in it.

That works. That's fun. But Apple white said that burden was nearly over because the time was drawn near for alien Jesus to quote unquote return Apple white's borrowed body and reenter the kingdom of heaven, which kind of makes me wonder, I don't know, Henry, maybe you know the answer to this. What happened to Marshall Apple white pre 1975? Like the dude that was in that body up until 1975 when alien Jesus came in and started inhabiting it. What happened to the dude that was in there before? Oh, God, Murkets, if I had a nickel, anytime people ask me what happened to the other guy. What happened to the other guy? I think he went into the Mario Brothers pipe down in Cooper's world. Maybe it's just I just it sounds like he got kicked out. Yeah. I mean, I mean, maybe he had

mentioned that and beyond human at some point, but that I don't know. There's nothing specific was said, not a single specific. He just says theoretical bullshit for 14 hours. Wow. All right. No, he has no concrete answers, because there is none. I do know he's the alien body because now that he has been occupied by the Jesus mind, now that the Christing has already happened to him, and he washes feet from all the strangers come. Once he got rid of all of that, he it doesn't matter anymore, Marcus. These are questions of the past. The past doesn't matter. I just stop asking about the past. I just feel like it's very weird that God is like, all right, here's your body. I'm going to want that back, though. And also, how does that? How does that is what they

said? That is true. They do. They put them in storage for use, because he said, basically, when you go up to heaven, your body goes up to T law, and then you take off this suit and you're hanging up in the wardrobe. And then if God isn't ready for you to be in the high kingdom, the father isn't ready for you to be in the high kingdom, you go back into wardrobe, put your suit back on, and just enter life as someone else. Yeah, but is God going to want a body that was perfectly given to him with no balls? Now, he's returning without balls. It's like the old VHS. You can't return VHS that's not rewound. Imagine if you returned one that didn't have balls. If it doesn't work at coals, why does it work in heaven? Exactly. At the same time,

Applewhite also began stressing that the deceased Bonnie Nettles was the father spoken of in the New Testament, meaning that she was essentially God, but still also an alien. So when you're watching those videos and you hear Applewhite referring to the father, I miss my father. I want to go back to the father. He's talking about Bonnie Nettles. Yes. Now, this sounds crazy. Just remember that nothing that Applewhite ever said was approached from a supernatural angle. Every single claim Applewhite made was presented as a concrete literal fact with not a single bit of metaphor attached. That's how he thought he was cutting through the noise and the why these people said that they were attracted to the ideas behind Heaven's Gate was because because of the practical

nature, which I think was a calculated choice that Marshall Applewhite started making as they went because I felt like Bonnie Nettles was way more theoretical. She was way more theoretical. She was way into the idea of sort of the theosophical idea. I believe it's the matreya, which is the ultimate mind. They called the chief of chiefs, which is they, it starts all wiggity, wiggity and spiritual. I think their combination, they realized that the secret sauce was to make it that this is all physical. You you go originally go with your physical body. You get picked up by a UFO that takes you to quote unquote heaven, which is outer space. It is a planet or ship. You're going to an actual spot. So these people for many, many years during

their hermit stage, they were actively told many times UFOs here were going out right now to go get it. They would go and look for UFO. They would wait for it didn't come for some reason. They would wait all these things for a while, asserting all of this stuff about your physical body. Your physical body is going to go up dematerialized. You're going to we're going to get you as close as we can to alien until we get up there. And then the rest of it's just going to happen to you. And it wasn't until Bonnie Nettles died that he started really ramping up all of the other shit. Like before they were you supposed to go all kitten caboodle with both balls. Yeah, you're supposed to go up into space, physical space. Yeah. When he said that he was

inhabited by alien Jesus, he was speaking literally. And that Heaven's Gate accepted fact was posted to a Usenet group in September of 1995 under the heading undercover Jesus resurfaces. Horrible undercover Jesus. But that's okay. What a good show that would be. Undercover Jesus in the Allity television show where he goes and he goes to like inside of a church. You know what I mean? He's like he's inside of a church like undercover boss, but it's Jesus like in a fake costume like he's in the and he's in the Vatican. And he's watching the Pope just get blown by a little boy. And then he's just like, I actually have some unfortunate news. Just like, what's that? Oh, yeah, you want me you want him before I'm done with him? Oh, yeah, you want to

get some sauce in him first. And then Jesus like, no, I'm your boss. What? You are a disgusting fake. Your character work. No, I believe that's a good message. That's a good message. You're really obsessed with priests blowing little boys. He was Catholic. I didn't see it, but I heard it. I thought it was milkshakes. No, for those of you who weren't around for the early days of the internet, Usenet was the father of all internet forums. In Usenet groups, people would make simple text posts and others would respond kind of like 4chan but without the images and a lot nicer. Okay, essentially Usenet is the prototype for all communication via the internet. But back then Usenet forums were the sole domain of academics, nerds and geeks the world over,

especially when it came to talking about sci fi. As such, Heaven's Gate figured that these Usenet groups were the perfect place to scoop up a few more members. In the undercover Jesus post, Applewhite avoided explicit apocalyptic language, but he did say that Heaven's Gate was the quote, last bus out of civilization. I don't want to take a bus. No, definitely not. He didn't mention suicide at all, but he did say that members would most likely lay down their human bodies and exit their vehicles during an inevitable violent confrontation with the government. And if you wanted, you could be a part of it. So this guy is selling a ruby ridge situation, but he ain't given it. Yeah, he's selling ruby ridge. Well, that's what we said in the last episode is that

Heaven's Gate wanted the government to come shoot him in the head. They wanted a ruby ridge. They wanted Waco. It just wasn't fucking common. They were trying to do the laziest genocide possible. Right. They wanted them to come because then they wouldn't have to do it because then, I think in more cynical terms, then Marshall Applewhite's not going to have to sell people on committing suicide, like physically committing suicide after the line has been all this time. And I truly that we're not going to physically commit suicide. All of this is a there's going to be a ship. There's something else tangible that's going to happen because I'm pretty certain that Bonnie Nettles was hardly against suicide the entire time. It sounds like she just liked

having a group of people. And also Bonnie Nettles expressed regret that her and Marshall Applewhite could never get get it get it. But if you're during their lifetime together, Bonnie Nettles like, I don't see why you don't want to kiss on me. I put lipstick all over me. You don't want none of it. And Marshall Applewhite was not interested in anything sexual. But I think that she was trying to keep this going for as long as possible. Well, you don't want to kiss a woman who has lipstick all over her. That woman seems to see psychiatric help. But they're not doing anything to get the government to shoot them. They're not walking around with AR 15s. They're not wearing sandals in the wintertime. They're doing nothing out of the ordinary. How do they expect the

government to know to kill them? They thought that it was just going to happen. They thought that eventually the government was going to hear about them. Like that was part of what they had a better chance of having sex with Janet Reno than them actually killing them. Well, that was part of what the 94 advertisements were about. It wasn't just about prostitutizing. It was also about sending up a flag to the government like, Hey, suicide call here. Suicide call. Suicide call. Come stop us. Come kill us. Come on. Come on. They wanted too much. They wanted too much. Well, the undercover posting in particular was made just a week after the Washington Post printed the Unabomber Manifesto. And it was only five months after the Oklahoma City bombing. So

anti-government rhetoric was definitely in the news. But even so, nobody paid attention. Probably because Usenet was full of atheist nerds. None of them are going to fucking respond to undercover Jesus. They didn't have enough pizzazz. This is where the pizzazz comes in. You need some character. You need uniforms. You need to shoot at the front of a bank. You need to do some stuff to spark it. They should have honestly been flyering outside of evangelical churches. I bet you that's their clientele. They believe in Jesus. They believe in some whack of new ideas. They want to get there fast. So they changed tack and went secular. They visited every Star Trek, Star Wars and X-Files forum and made a post entitled, E.T. Speaks, UFOs, Slash Space Aliens, Slash Reboot Civilizations.

Oh yeah, dude. That's how you get them. Because everybody's like, I'm looking for aliens. And when I was truly kind of in darker days or like when I was really deep, deep, deep into internet culture, like reading, reading a lot, spending a lot of time on 4chan. That'd be almost very attractive because it's fun. Like you get to go role play. But again, it's there's a break between the internet and reality, even though that that line is getting blurred more and more and more. It's fun to role play with all of these people on the internet, but it takes a lot of energy to cross it over to a real life. Like we're all going to show up and join this cult. But doesn't this prove that he knew exactly what he was doing? He can just say screw religion. Let's just go

the sci fi route. It's so purposeful, but it was very nefarious. Oh yeah. And but it was still in the cosmology of heaven's gate. It was still the same message just put in a different way. Okay. They're just selling it. Yeah. In this post, they heavily leaned on the space alien angle, saying that there was a war underway between various alien races for the spoils of planet earth. And that war was about to come home. But again, not a single taker. The most positive message they got was from a single nerd who wrote quote, I am a very receptive to the idea of other species from other planets. I was forced by my next level admiral of the ex quiz dimension to write this. So while heavens gate may have been the first cult to attempt proselytizing on the internet,

they were as Benjamin Zeller points out, certainly not an internet religion, although they were definitely an internet joke. Okay, nobody. I think there was maybe one person who saw the website and said that looks good. And then they changed. But and they came over. But I think that all the use net posts like fucking nothing, nobody was fine. It's not already halfway there. If you if you got a use net post to bring you to San Diego, right. But it's not like they it's not for a lack of trying. They didn't have a lot of members. No, definitely not for a lack of trying. That just wasn't a whole lot of takers. Okay. But when they launched the heavens gate website in April of 1996, a little less than a year before the suicides, the cult was deadly serious.

And they tried spreading the word further by selling a book on said website. The book was a compilation of crucial documents concerning their belief system called how and when heavens gate the door to the physical kingdom level above human may be entered an anthology of our materials. And if you want to read those, they are now on sacred sacred dash text dot com slash UFO slash hd slash book slash book that hdm. Unfortunately for them, though, very few copies were sold. So they had to buy back the remaining copies from the publisher at a discounted price. Oh, my God, that is what you got to do. That's a sad, sad day. Just put him in Donald Trump Jr. So again, buy our book, because we don't want to have to buy back our book. We can't afford to do that. I don't

want to pay for a storage space to put all my unsold books in. I tell you what, if we do have a storage space full of unsold books, it's not going to just be unsold books. You know what I mean? No, what do you mean? I'm saying straight up just piles of C4 piles of C4. Okay. But what this anthology did give the group was their permanent name. Heaven's Gate. They just got the permanent name in 96. Yeah. Holy hell. And even then it wasn't necessarily what they called themselves. Heaven's Gate was more of a concept because Heaven's Gate was the Heaven's Gate was the thing that they were all walking through. And the only person who could help them walk through was Marshall Applewhite. They called themselves the class. Yes, they were just the class or the classroom

situation, which is the answer they kept. That was all of the softening language that fucking drives me up the wall. In the exit statements, they always asked me like, so how did you find yourself in this classroom situation? Like it was a pop-up that just happened around them. Yeah. Now, as we said last episode, suicide had been on the table for Heaven's Gate since 1994. The only thing Applewhite needed, he said, was a sign. And that sign came in 1995 with the appearance of the Hail Bop Comet. I remember Hail Bop. It was a phenomenon. First discovered by two amateur astronomers named Alan Hale and Thomas Bop. The comet actually became a bit of an international phenomenon because you could see it. Anyone in

the Northern Hemisphere could see Hail Bop with the naked eye for about a year or two. The comet was a thousand times brighter than Haley's comet and it behaved differently from most comets because it appeared to spin and twirl the closer it came to Earth. Cool. And Hail Bop might have remained just another fun astrological event had it not been for coast-to-coast AM. Really? My boy! My fucking boy! A-B! My boy's telling the fucking news, dude! It seems like it's possible it's going to turn into nothing more than a mmm-bop. Remember that? Yeah, remember that. It was about the same time. Yeah. It was about the same time. Remember. Would you have Burger King again? I love those little girls. Those were- those were- those were little girls. Those were men. I'm sorry. You're

not even a good pet out. Bye from your grave. Hey guys. Carolina Hidalgo here from Moviesign with the Mads podcast. I'm here with my co-host Frank Conniff and Trace Bellew who you may know and love from Mystery Science Theater 3000. The three of us come together and we do a weekly podcast here on Last Podcast Network. Movies like Black Panther. It's the Good Cats movie. Parasite. Unlike an actual parasite, it doesn't suck. Parasite will feed on you long after you've seen it. It's in my head. Avengers Endgame. Not a porn about anal. Goldfinger. I love Goldfinger. Take it from me. Oldfinger. Aquaman. It sucks every bit as much as I thought it would. You will believe a fish can swim. Black Dynamite. It's both of those. Moviesign with the Mads. Here on

Last Podcast Network available exclusively on Spotify. Bye from your grave. Hi. It's Vessar Andrew from the podcast. This story must be told. Chomp down on this totally free snippet from an episode titled The Mathematics of Grocery Stores. He holds the screwdriver that popped open the bathroom door forever invading my privacy. Bill squawks like a crow. I've made it abundantly clear that if you returned, I would get the police involved. You're trespassing. I stare at him motionlessly and wonder what his eyeglass prescription is. I burp and my tongue burns with a mixture of bile and soap. Someone ate all your soap. I tell him flatly. His face contorts in disgust and his glasses slide down his nose. I have the sudden urge to grab his face and

bite his cheek as hard as possible. I can feel the wet meat of his face mixed with the oily chemicals of this soap slipping down my tongue and sliding down my throat. The urge passes though. This was in 1996, which means that Art Bell was still at the helm of everybody's favorite paranormal talk show. And naturally the appearance of something flying through the sky was good fodder for coast to coast AM. Talk about that shit for hours. I listened to some of it. They had the interview where he came on. Alan Hale came on and one of the funniest bits of the very top was Art Bell having to apologize. He was like, I just want to say I'm sorry for calling you a sham artist and a delusionist. He called him a delusionist saying something about him and Alan Hale

got into some fight where the talk trash about each other on various radio shows. But then he decided to come on to coast to coast AM because coast to coast is like the biggest thing happening, especially in Comet News. I would pay so much money to see the conspiracy theory fights. If we could actually see Alex Jones fight our boy, Bill Cooper, that would be hilarious. They almost got into a couple of fistfights. They had on air feuds for many, many years. I think Alex Jones might be able to physically beat up Bill Cooper. I think he might be able to physically handle him. But Bill Cooper, I can guarantee he had at least one ankle gun. Yeah, I agree. That's a side stories debate. Bill Cooper versus Alex Jones.

But when Art Bell got to talking about Hale Bop on the November 14, 1996 episode of Coast to Coast, he got a call from an amateur astronomer named Chuck Schrammack who said that he'd photographed a companion following the Comet. That was strange enough. But the next night, a guy named Courtney Brown called up saying that he had been able to remote view himself to the Comet and had discovered that the companion spotted by Schrammack was what else but a spacecraft. And it was called, it was named Hardy Bop. It's Hale and Hardy Bop. This craft, was that a wrestling reference? No, it was a food reference. Hale and Hardy. Because you don't eat. You don't know Hale and Hardy. That's a soup, right? That's a soup.

You'll love it. Soup is your steak. I like soup fine. My wife's more the soup woman. She loves soup. My wife likes soup. My wife likes soup. I'm the husband. I like meat. I can just see Marcus crunching pickles as she slurps her soup. My husband is having only pickles for dinner tonight. And my wife will have the soup. Well, this is Hale and Hardy. I'm sorry, we don't have pickles. Well, this craft, Brown claimed, was larger than Earth, hollow and under intelligent control. And who should be a loyal listener to coast to coast, but tall Audi, who happened to be one of Applewhite's most ardent followers. And he's the goofy one that wore the St. Patrick's Day hat in the exit statements. And he made a whole thing about how

tall he was. And it's a constant joke. And every single time they put him on camera, they all joke about how tall he is and about how he's gonna be tall enough to see over the control panel of the UFO and see more than everybody else in the old giggle. Now that I think about it, it's a little bit like the office with the testimonials. Yeah, it is in a way. I don't, I'm not a huge fan of the office. No, as well. However, this confluence of events is precisely why people believe the suicide was an attempt to hitch a ride on the spacecraft. It wasn't. Hale bop was not the means of conveyance. Hale bop was the sign that it was time to go. More likely in Applewhite's mind, the comet was more connected to the appearance of the comet Cahotech in 1973. 1973 was the year

that Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles met. So Hale bop was a nice little bookend to the whole saga. Cahotech at the beginning, Hale bop at the end. Interesting. And you know Marshall Applewhite on repeat played Ace of Base. I saw the sign and danced a little bit. It was the time. It was the time. I remember that. It was the time. It might have been the exact same. They might have been talking about that. Cahotech is also the name of an album, a concept album by the Source family, another cult that I discovered this morning. And that album was released in 1973 when Cahotech was over Earth. Wow. It's almost like there's some similarities. Source family was hot, man. They were all just very attractive. They had a recording studio. They were fun. They were fun.

But the funny thing was Alan Hale knew from the moment he spotted Hale bop that something bad was going to happen. Right after discovering it, he told a colleague that there would most likely be suicides to follow once the entire Earth got a hold of the news. Because people always go a little nutty when there's a comet overhead. For some reason. I don't know what it is. People see it as like that. Marshall Applewhite seeing the comet as a sign. He was not alone in that. And this is also not a new phenomenon. People have been seeing comets in the sky as signs for millennia. Sure. Yeah. To me, it's like a hello from the cosmos. Yeah. There's very few times in life that you get to actually see unless you are an astronomer or an amateur astronomer and you look up in the

sky a lot. When you see movement in the sky, I think it speaks to like primal man of the universe is speaking to us directly. We're seeing its movements. I've been playing Days Gone and when it's nighttime in the video game, you can look up to the sky and you can see quite amazing shooting stars. And then of course there's zombies on the ground. So that's your review for Days Gone. Yeah. It's like looking up into the sky. Wow. But it's not though. It's a video game. You're in your home. You're experiencing nothing. It's okay. It's not a bad game. Psychologically though, while we can't blame Art Bell for giving Applewhite the idea for hitching a ride on a spaceship through suicide, we can say that Courtney Brown's planetary spaceship claims certainly gave some

Heaven's Gate member solace as the march towards suicide began. If you're telling me you're alien Jesus, I want to see some proof. I'm one of those. Yeah. I want to see it. So this is the closest thing they had remotely. That's why that's why he clicked on it too. It's that it's it's some form of proof something that anything that he says is real. All right. And there was a photograph to go along with it. Like there was a photograph that said that was supposedly of the companion, but it was pretty quickly figured out that the photograph was totally doctored. Okay. But you know, if you if you don't want to believe that it's doctored, you can say that, oh, they're saying it's doctored. That's a Luciferian plot. There is actually something there. But Marshall Applewhite

was also very careful to say like, no, there's not a spaceship there. Wink, wink, wink, wink. There's not a spaceship there. We don't know about that. Wink, wink, wink. But if you're thinking about whether or not to kill yourself, then the possibility that there might be a spaceship there, that might push you over the edge. Okay. Just enough. Just enough. They found out that I think the big tell that it was doctored was that the Noid was on it. Oh, really? The Dominoid? The Dominoid? But with his followers, Applewhite was desperately trying to convince everyone that what was coming was not suicide. In 1996, he wrote an essay called Our Position Against Suicide, and the group posted it to the website. In this essay, he said that there were four possible ways to get to the next

level. One, physical pickup onto a spacecraft and transfer of bodies aboard that craft. Okay. Cool. Love it. Two, natural death, accident or random violence. That happens. Can't wait. Three, outside persecution. That'd be the government. Come and get me. I'll fucking light it up. Come at me, SWAT team. What are we going to do about it? Or four, willful exit of the bodies in a dignified manner. What? Yeah, that sounds like suicide to me. No, it's an exit of the vehicle. It's not suicide. It's an exit of the vehicle, and it's willful, and it's dignified, so it's fine. Teacher, I have a question. I have a question. How are we doing that then? Is there a little door in my face or something? You're going to show me that? Kind of shit like, how's the exit go?

Feel around. Do you have balls? Nah, man. Mexico. Yeah, buddy. I can remember Mexico, dude. Well, you're going to go the way of your testicles. Oh, I'm going in a trash can. Yeah. That's the final vessel. Now, Apo White was really banking on the third scenario, but when it became obvious that this was never going to happen because nobody in Heaven's Gate could will themselves into becoming a criminal, option four became the only choice. They could have gotten shot in the ass by the Secret Service, go to the White House, pull your pants down, and show them your butthole. There are so many easy ways to die at the hands of the U.S. government or the police force. But they're not criminals. They just don't have it in them. Like, they are not,

they're not criminals. They're not aggressive. These are horribly socially awkward people, and they're not aggressive in any way whatsoever. None of them are aggressive people. That's why they're with Heaven's Gate, because they can't fucking handle aggression or confrontation. Take the guns and shoot them up into the sky in the front yard. The cops will show up. They say, drop the gun. You just don't drop it. They will shoot you. They're all in their super loose hemp clothing with their with their Tom shoes on, slipping off using all of their body weight to pick up an AK-47. Come at me pigs, and then just trying to get the gun up enough to shoot. Little note on Tom's shoes. They give away free shoes for every shoe you buy. Unfortunately,

that's ruining the markets in Africa, which is actually putting people out of business, which is one of the issues that we have with UNICEF and giving free rice to lowers the market. That's a bummer. Do I have to bring a toilet flush into this? I haven't brought a toilet flush in in a long time. I don't remember if you ever have actually. Not on this show, but you know what? It's the first time for everything. Toilet flush! Wow. Flushing the truth down the toilet. Interesting. But that's why they bought the guns, because they thought maybe we can do this. Maybe we can get the guns. Maybe we can get the government to come and get us. But fittingly, for Heaven's Gate, the lack of governmental persecution was just another way in which the world at large

hadn't lived up to their expectations. You gotta channel your inner Bill Cooper, man. And since the world didn't care, they were going to make them care. Furthermore, it appeared as if Heaven's Gate was suddenly on a clock. It's rumored but not confirmed that Marshall Applewhite had been diagnosed with cancer. And even if he hadn't, he was certainly showing signs of advanced age. But he wasn't even that old. In my estimation, what I watch it, from the time I watch it, all the different iterations now of Marshall Applewhite I saw, I think he was purposely letting himself go. I think that he was starving himself, or fasting, or doing various things. I think that he went to his most extreme of their behavior.

He was letting himself deteriorate so that they could see he's performing it for them. I'm letting go of the vehicle already. I'm already doing it. You're with me. We're all eating less. Everybody's eating less. Less activity. Everybody's slowly starting to kind of pull away. And I think that he was doing it physically to show my time up is here. He might have had cancer, but I also think that it was a weird conscious choice. He was doing a Daniel Day Lewis and becoming the part. Going back to last episode, they're trash in the rental car. They're trash in the rental car. And that may be true. He might have been doing that. But yeah, we don't know. That's 100% speculation. But Marshall Applewhite, I think, was about to

leave Earth whether he wanted to or not. And if Marshall suddenly died, then all of his adherents would lose their only chance at reaching the evolutionary level above human. And with this, you could absolutely look at it two different ways. From one perspective, you could say that Applewhite was dying and decided to take everyone with him out of pure fucking selfishness, where he's just like, I'm going to die. Everyone's going to go with me. But looked at another way, this could be another example of cult members, yes, anding themselves into death. If Marshall was dying, then by their own belief system, members would be losing their only chance at attaining the next level, because only next level aliens can shepherd earthlings into the next level.

And you have to take advantage when they're here. That's the whole thing. That was a part of me saying, I'm only here for a short period of time. This is a window. These only happen every fucking 2000 years. You've got to jump on when the guy's here to give you the ticket to the next level. And there also might not have been a next time because the earth was about to be spated under. Remember that? But this earth is going to be recycled, refurbished, which got more and more sinister each time he said spated under. It went from philosophical spiritual change to anything could happen. Then it started massive storms was one thing. And then he did all yet a whole side plot about robots killing everyone and the aliens not just coming to rescue them,

but like rescue the next level people that are prepared for it, but killing everybody else. But this is give everybody a restart. But this is like when a commercial says, buy this nonstick pan, only two minutes left. And then you can buy it, you know, whatever for half off. But that ad is playing every single second of every single day. Yeah. But if Appa White was indeed dying, then he couldn't set all these people free unless he told them that he was indeed just a man and had been so all along. On the other hand, though, he'd also probably convinced himself that everything he said was true by that point anyway, because people had been validating his claims for 20 years on a constant daily basis, which fed back to the followers

themselves. And so in some fucked up megalomaniacal way, Marshall Appa White may have thought that he was doing these people a favor by bringing them along on his journey, because the only other option was to leave them behind to the Luciferian hordes. Put differently, Marshall Appa White didn't have the heart to break up with his cult. So he instead took them to the grave. But you know when you feel like, oh, man, I'm really great. Maybe I'm even better than a lot of people. And then you take a liquid dump. That brings you right back to just being like, oh, yeah, I'm just a sad, lumpy, dumpy person like everyone else. Oh, yes, I'm a donkey man. I'm a donkey man. Yeah. You know, my feeling about Marshall Appa White, because I do believe that as the leader of these

people, because you have become their adopted father, they have given you up everything, right? That's the relationship you've been searching for all this time. Marshall Appa White wants to feel important. He sort of rented the feeling of importance to a group of people that allowed them to feel like they were in line with the only truth, and that they found it, which helps boost their ego a little bit in a way that makes them feel like they belong to a group. Even though a part of this was especially towards the end, if you hear them in their in the exit videos, it gets up being fairly aggressive, right, in terms of their feeling towards Earth. I think Marshall Appa White needed them in order for him to be real, in order for him to be the alien

Godhead. Right. He needed them to be there and commit suicide with him. Absolutely. It's the ultimate selfish act to drive them all to the point of doing it, to the point of coming with me to jump. Yeah. And it's all because if you all leave, I'm not dough. No, you're a crazy person, don't commit suicide with me. I'm not an alien. It's the same. And I am an, I gotta be an alien. You're not a stand-up comedian if you're, if there's no crowd. You're just talking to yourself. Yeah. But if I think it really did work into a feedback loop where it's been, he's telling, you know, he's telling them he's an alien Jesus, they're telling him back, yes, you are alien Jesus. We're so happy. We're so much happier with our lives with you. And so it just goes back and

forth. Then that happens for 20 years. And there's an entity named Q running the U.S. government. It's all the same thing. So in January of 1997, the group updated their website with the following message. Right alert. Hellbop brings closure to Heaven's Gate. Whether Hellbop has a companion or not is irrelevant from our perspective. However, its arrival is joyously very significant to us at Heaven's Gate. The joy is that our older member in the evolutionary level above human, the Kingdom of Heaven, has made it clear to us that Hellbop's approach is the marker we've been waiting for. The time for the arrival of the spacecraft from the level above human to take us home to their world in the literal Heaven. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth is finally

coming to conclusion. Graduation from the human evolutionary level. We are happily prepared to leave this world and go with T's crew. I think five pugs could have saved them. Just give them pugs. Give them a dog to pug. Give them Frenchie in the news. They needed a dog to pet. Congratulations, everyone. You finally understood what the fuck that message actually said. What? Because we've all like that message that we've all been reading on the Heaven's Gate website since 1997. I've always wondered what the fuck all that meant. And now we finally know. Did you understand all that? I didn't. Have you been paying attention? Yeah. Of course I haven't. Yes, yes, yes. No, but explain it for the audience. They do a lot of

purposefully complicated talk around a fairly simple idea is that we're cleansing our bodies for this fucking UFO to show up. This thing is telling us this is the symbol that T is sent from the other level and that they're ready. They're ready. Yes. Bonnie Nettles has sent Hellbop to show us that it's time to kill ourselves to go to the next level. She's playing crafts up there. She's throwing a comet. Yeah, I always got to hear John and say, how am I telling my people? What's going on, y'all, right? And I said, let me tell them, let me send them a picture of my sexless mouth. And they said, no. And so I was like, maybe some kind of bat signal. You don't sound much better in the afterlife. I don't feel good.

And with that posting, the plan was set in motion. Later that month, the group special ordered 50 patches that read Earth exit monasteries. And a month later, they bought fabric for both their final uniforms and the shrouds they would use to cover themselves at the time of their deaths. Finally, they bought 39 identical pairs of Nike decades, which were discontinued soon after the suicides. There's something floating around. I think the one eBay listing I had, they cost about $6,000 now. This is the only time where marketers actually did something, I guess, morally right. Get them out of here. Because I actually think nowadays our society has fallen so much from any kind of grace that they would just promote the hell out of them.

Yeah. Well, as far as why they chose Nike decades in particular, one surviving member said, quote, we were looking for a goodbye on shoes. Practical. That is a great pay less commercial. I think they bought them for $49.95 each. That's a steal. They got them wholesale. They went to a shoe store and said, what do you got, guys? These Nike decades, they're on their way out. I remember that. They're huge. East Bay had a football section, they had a basketball section, a suicide cult section, and then they also had wrestling shoes, which were not easy to find. But it was decided that Earth exit monasteries, that wasn't quite right. Not quite the right

message. Oh, really? Yeah. So they ordered new patches with a more appropriate title. Heaven's Gate Away Team. It's true that it's much better. It is much better. Yeah. It is. And it's very good. They're very good at these light branding things. That is a part of a cult mentality that I can see why they didn't know how to package it because you heard Marshall Applewhite point of view like, because that's what we are. We're going home now. We've been away from our home for far too long. Right. So after they charted when Halbop's closest position to Earth would be, the members of Heaven's Gate embarked on a three week long exploration into the pleasures of the

Luciferian world. They're about to- They gave them one last fuck. What? Isn't that going to derail everything? No, it was highly regulated. They went to Las Vegas, but only did so so they could visit the stratosphere, which was a casino that looked like a flying saucer. I don't think they actually did any slots or anything. It's the fly team from fucking 9-11 tour that they just did. They hit all the same shit that those guys did with all the strip clubs. They went to the movies, but- What did they see? Secrets and Lies. Critically acclaimed very if boring British film. My airing board. You know what they could have seen? What? For one, fucking Selena was in the theaters. They could have seen that delightful movie. That would have actually turned them all

around. Or they could have seen Double Team, starring John Claude Van Damme and Dennis Robman. No kidding. I watched that in the theaters. Secrets and Lies, also the name of my brother's first pornography tape, therefore it was the tape that I would steal all the time, but it was not the acclaimed film. It was about a doctor who did things with her patients, but it was all consensual. But the craziest thing they did was go to SeaWorld and Wild Animal Park on the same day. Both of them. Wow. On the same day. And Applewhite allowed them to go out to several local restaurants for meals and the lead up. Get to go out to eat. Okay. This is- I think it's very interesting for a group of people that so were taught to have disdain for the world

so much that they decided to do this for fun, which I don't particularly understand how it all works in their worldview, but I guess it's all kind of a gobbledygook over there, isn't it? It is indeed. But on March 19th, things got serious. Uh-oh. So they've had their apple- they've had their appetizers? Yeah. Appetizers? Mm-hmm. They've had their popcorn. Oh. They've gone to SeaWorld. They've seen Shamu. Oh. It's time to go. Okay. On March 19th, that was a day that all but four members of Heaven's Gate recorded their exit statements. These videotaped interviews mailed after the fact to news outlets around America featured testimony from almost every member of the cult explaining their positions. Now, the overall mood of these videos is hard to

pin down because the testimonies of the members are all over the place. Some absolutely believe 100% an Applewhite's message, while others, according to a psychologist who sent Henry an email, just wanted to commit suicide. I believe when you watch him- because that's what I was watching for. I was like, I want to see fucking- I want to see you ecstatic. I was like, I wanted to watch these videos and I want to see you guys be so fucking jazzed about going to Heaven. And I'd say about between five and 10 are jazzed. They are actively- Really? Loving it. Are those the ones who are just excited for suicide? No. I think that they believe that they are going to go to an alien realm. They believe

they are going to. And I think that there's also a chunk that are just- it's the level of vitriol they have for society that is very interesting. It's a feeling- that's why another feeling I get from them is rage. A lot of rage and a lot of anger about life and I believe that they think that- and I think that I agree with them. Life is unfair and very, very difficult, especially if you are already socially awkward. And it's- we are blessed with our- our fucking yapping mouths unfortunately that we can fit into a lot of society a little bit easier because people like a clown sometimes. Look at you, Kissel. No one's murdered you. Not yet. No. No one's murdered me at all. They've tried and tried and tried. But you know what I always say? Why put down the gun. Let's have some fun.

Really good. Really good. Well actually let's- let's listen to a clip from one of the guys who just obviously does not want to be here anymore. Okay. I have a few words about why I'm here with the class about to take this final step and the main thing is that there's nothing- okay I'm no longer satisfied or fulfilled by any- any human pursuit, indulgence or activity. I've been down many different paths. I've been on both the top and bottom of this world. I've tried it all and there's nothing on this planet that is worthwhile or of any interest to me. The information given to me by my teachers, T. and Doe, is the only thing that makes any sense to me. T. and Doe have helped me learn how to be more restrained and refined in my actions, speech, and thoughts. They've taught

me the true meaning of kindness, goodness, compassion, and caring. They've done this not by lecturing to me but by their example. They've always been perfect role models, never wavering, wanting only to give service to the kingdom of heaven, the evolutionary level above human. I know that I have the freedom to do anything I choose. I've made the conscious choice to willfully exit this vehicle or body that I'm wearing. I'm fully aware that to stay here, to reject the choice, to go to the next level, to separate from the kingdom of God is suicide. I've only one regret. I regret the time wasted outside this classroom, walking down paths that were dead ends, missing the opportunity to be here with T. and Doe. I can't deny what I've come to know

through them and I know I'd be a fool to stay here. For me, this is the only logical next step and it's simply time to move on. He looks and sounds like Tom Steyer. He was currently running for president kind of. Jesus Christ, he does. Why did, but why, you're giving your student exit interview and the phone rings? They can't disconnect the phone? They were not great at production. They don't hold for planes. There's a lot of stuff in there. There's a couple of times when a plane flies overhead and you can't hear what the fuck they're saying because it's goddamn loud. The phone rings a lot. I don't know who's calling them all the time, but the phone rings a lot. So that is an example of someone who is happy to go. That's someone who just wants to kill

themselves. Whatever happened to him. Who cares? Let's just get the fuck out of here. There are some people who I don't think wanted to kill themselves. I don't think they really believed that they were fucking going up to heaven either. For example, this woman named Levode joined in 1975 during the famous Walport organ meeting, the one that was covered by the New York Times, and she absolutely does not sound happy about what's going on despite what she's saying. We're very happy and proud to have been members of Tito's class and couldn't be happy about what we're about to do. Doubt is never an issue. Certainly at times, temptations of the vehicle or dumb influences might turn our heads for this reason or that,

but there's always a deep down knowing that from the moment of seeing Tito that this is why I'm here to take this vehicle and do this task and always knew that I knew Tindo from before this time that there was strong recognition. Are they performing in front of the puppets from the Labyrinth? What are you talking about? They laughed. Who was watching that? What is going on in the background of these videos? Marshall is sitting there too. And so he laughed at her when she started crying? You hear them have, it's a reaction they have quite a bit because they all are still kind of performing for Marshall Appelwight. He's a part of this whole process. So hearing her have an emotional reaction because a lot of them are having tears of joy too and just talking about

focusing on Tindo, not even really talking about what they're about to do. And they have emotional reactions talking about the burdens that they've given Dou, all of their horseshit. And I think it's just nervous reaction. She looks miserable. Yeah. She is not happy. She is obviously very scared. She looks very scared. She has obviously enjoyed this life. Like she joined them in 1975. It is a way of living that she's done for 20 years. I think she thought, I figured it out. I like living like this. I like living with these people. This is all fun. But oh, now we have to kill ourselves. I didn't really want to do that. But since everybody else is doing it, I guess I have to. Because the only other option is to go live the life that I hated so fucking much. Well,

speaking of have to, you got to check out the last book on the left. April, we will be hitting the road on our tour. Very excited to see you all. Check out the book. You're really going to love it. But on top of all that, you've also got your true believers who are not only ready and willing to do it, but are absolutely convinced that they're about to go to space heaven. In a way, their ignorance is bliss. I guess they get to die happy anyway. Listen to this guy. My older members, T. and Do, which are members from the next level, have been the best teachers to give that information. And as a result of that, I'm here and I'm very, very happy here. I don't know what I did to deserve to be here. And I'm embarrassed that I can't express without getting emotional how good I feel

about what I'm doing and how good I feel about being here and being given this opportunity to go to the next level. Just the opportunity is the gift is just overwhelming is the only word that I can come up with. Well, I guess that answers any other questions we would have asked. I didn't know that I was going to talk so much, but like I said, we all feel very emotional about the gift that we've been given. I'm the happiest person in the world. That man is the living embodiment of the dog in the meme that sits there as the house is burning and it's just like, everything is fine. It's fine. Everything's cool. You know, it's interesting because if you do give in to the thought because then I've been trying to

do my own thought little experiments of being like, well, let's say I believed all this shit. Like let's say I could lift off the top of my head and agree and believe that all of this is real. It would be very exciting to if you if you could fully ingest it that you that you want to be a part of this. I think that's the only way those are the he is very lucky that he got to that mind state and stayed in if he wanted to. But you should have been fucking rescued. Well, that last guy was the brother of Michelle Nichols who played Lieutenant Uhura on the original Star Trek. Well, you know, it's almost been so jazzed to have him there. Oh, yeah. I bet he didn't tell him that Uhura was a sister for like a year. Well, it's hard to live in your sister's

shadow when she's such a big star. Well, when asked about his decision after the suicides, she released a statement that said, quote, my brother was a highly intelligent and a beautifully gentle man. He made his choices and we respect those choices. Okay. Thing is, though, Heaven's Gate was absolutely cognizant of the fact that everyone was going to call him unhinged idiots who'd followed a megalomaniacal baldy into the grave. Here's what one member said about that. One thing that does come to mind is when we leave, I know the media will treat this unless we leave in a craft and no vehicles, no bodies are left behind. It's some sort of weird bizarre call to suicide calls, whatever you might want to call it.

But look deeper than the words. Look for what we've taught people and the message we've left behind because we know that it's difficult to understand the next level requires a commitment, kind of final ingredient of leaving the body and giving it up until you can actually graduate into the next level. It's difficult to know that. But for those that we've left behind, we're going on to something greater and better and that we hope that someday you will understand this and you might join us. And we want to thank all my classmates who've helped me along the way, my teachers, Tee, and everyone in the next level who's seen us through this. This is part three, later on in the episode, what is their message? Like honestly, what is

this? What I'm saying, their message is total disdain for human experience. Yeah, that is their true message. So that's the message I'm supposed to take, you just hate me and you die? That is what I have taken from it. I know that it's about leading a more restrained life. It's about being more refined, less attached to things. Yes, so do the Amish. But they just build furniture. Move your Los Angeles. Honestly, it's all, it's kind of bullshit. Just go to fucking yoga. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. Go to the juicer, get a drink or juice. There's a lot of ways you can do this without committing suicide. There's like many, there's many other people that teach the same shit without committing suicide. You can go to a monastery. You can go

to an actual monastery and do this whole bullshit and not commit suicide. Also, there's a new trend in Los Angeles. I don't know if you know this, Henry. It's called getting juiced, where you go to a place, they squeeze you and squeeze you and squeeze you until you make juice. Yep, I wish. Like, like Veruca salt and Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory? It's not real Marcus. I don't know what these wacky Angelinos are all about. Angelinos. That's what you call yourselves, right, Henry? I don't fucking know. They call themselves actors. Actors. Well, as far as the demographics of the people who made up the final 39 went, a lot of them were women in late middle age. Three were in their mid to late 20s. All of those joined at the very end. Damn. The oldest

was 72. The average age of a Heaven's Gate member at the end was 46 years old, mostly because a lot of these people had joined Heaven's Gate around 1976 when they were all still in their 20s. Man, when I'm 46, I'm going to have the coolest, flyest toupee. I'm going to be out there with my fucking Camaro, getting fucking burritos. Natalie and I are going to be fucking on the beach with our seven Chihuahuas. When I'm 46, that's going to be the golden age for me. Yeah, I can see you with like a toupee hung out by like a helmet, like a, like a strap, like a chin strap. That's flowing in the background. It's going to be a Hariyama cup, but I'm going to put like a pentagram on it as well. It's going to be fun. Okay, cool.

But man, when I look at the exit statements overall, like I'd say the strongest emotion that these people share is that most of them are just kind of bummed. Yeah. And just like some of them are bummed because they're about to die. Others are just miffed that they're having to do this themselves, but mostly it's just like, oh man, what a fucking bummer. Like I hope when I fucking die that I have a stronger emotion than what a fucking bummer. They've lived life like this though. Right. That was a part of the message. The part of the message is just, it's the total detachment of it. Right. Which is, I get that there's, what it seems to be, what I'll talk about a little bit is that Marcus and I got into a debate about Scientology versus Heaven's Gate,

right? And what, you know, again, what is it about? What? Cause the thing about a cult, sometimes what adheres you to it is that in little bitty ways, there are helpful things that come out of the teachings of the cult, like slyly, like Scientology. A lot of people have said that within the beginning levels of Scientology, you get like a boost of confidence. Like you feel more capable of tackling problems. Like these exercises kind of like, they teach you about attention to detail, all this other fucking horseshit, right? And Heaven's Gate, they say that there's actually some very useful buddhist type meditation exercises that they did that actually do bring a sense of well-being. And the detachment is supposed to help alleviate anxiety and bring

more peace to your life. But then it goes, dumb shit. It goes where I could do. With the fake aliens. Right. I guess it's easier to commit suicide if you have not enjoyed or allowed yourself to enjoy any aspects of life. Yeah, it is. I mean, if you're a long prep, if you're separated completely from your body, because all these people are separated completely from their body, they think of their body, every single one of them calls their body this vehicle. Like if you watch those exit statements, you hear them say this vehicle over and over and over again, because that's how they think of their bodies. They're completely and totally detached from what it means to be human. Mm-hmm. They also are not even, they are on fucking autopilot, dude. There's a part of them,

when I watch them, they say terms in the exact same words and intonation that Marshall Appalachite has been saying in the Beyond Human videos. It's just a repeat. They have just allowed their brains to be replaced with his brain more often than not. But some of people, like the one guy that would seem genuinely happy with it, like, there's a thinking guy. He's obviously thinking and he's present. What the fuck's your problem, man? I know that you want alien heaven to be real. I do too, dude, but you show me an alien first. That's the rule. Before I do that shit, I want to see an alien. What if I just show you the movie that has Mack in it? Mack and me. Mack and me. Well, I'll show you that movie. We'll pretend it's a documentary.

He's got a little butthole for a mouth. Yes, yes, he does. That's okay. At the same time, though, with some of them, there's also an air of supreme smugness. One member said that trying to explain their belief system to the rest of the world would be like trying to explain theoretical physics to a four-year-old. Yeah, but it's not at all like theoretical physics. But it would be the same level of complication, and this guy could not have been more self-congratulatory for supposedly figuring it all out. I don't know. And so, with the exit statements done, the entire group went out to one last lunch, all together. Where'd they go? Marie calendars.

He went to go with your grandma. When you visit your grandma in Escoda, that's where you go. I didn't even know that was a real restaurant. I thought that was just a frozen food. Yeah, I thought so too, but apparently it's a real restaurant. They all had identical meals of iced tea, cheesecake, and chicken pot pie. Nice. That's good shit batter right there. Yeah, not so bad, okay. I love Marie calendar's chicken pot pie. I do too. That's why I said nice. I lived on those things for a long time. Absolutely. The next day, they mailed packages to eight organizations and people filled with documents and two videotapes containing exit statements, along with a press release saying

that anyone who wants to follow them is welcome to try. Then, they all ate a final communal meal of pizza and the first wave of suicides began. Did they poison the pizza? They did not poison the pizza. They enjoyed the pizza. Good. Going off what they learned from Derek Humphrey's suicide manual final exit, Heaven's Gate made a concoction that they hoped would be painless. In three waves, with the next wave helping the last, the members of Heaven's Gate ate pudding or applesauce mixed with ground up phenobarbital bought in Mexico. They washed that down with vodka and to make damn sure,

they tied a plastic bag over their heads. Then, once they expired, another member would remove the bag, clean up the body, and place a purple shroud over their face because purple was the favorite color of Bonnie Nettles. Every single one was wearing a matching uniform and all of them had a $5 bill and a roll of quarters in their pocket. In the final months, it had become an inside joke at Heaven's Gate that they might need bus fare when they got to the next level. So, each one was cheekily prepared for the possibility. Oh, not funny. Not funny, no. Heaven's Gate members went one by one over the course of two days while Marshall Applewhite

presumably oversaw the whole thing because we don't really know exactly how it went over those two days. All we know is they started on the 21st and ended on the 22nd. And we know that Marshall Applewhite and his helpers went last on the 23rd, including Applewhite, 39 people perished with a duffel bag next to their bodies in the hopes that they would reach the next level. I asked this question, and this is not supposed to be in jest. It's literally the only question I've had since we started talking here in the past three minutes. What kind of pizza? Do we know what kind of pizza it was? I would imagine it's cheese, I would imagine it's cheese, but this is the stuffed cut. This is when stuffed crust came

out and everyone was eating. These are not bells and whistles people. You and I, our families were the test subjects. We were out there dutifully making sure that does this stuff come up? Does that come up to snuff? Yep. We had those conversations as a family. You remember all sitting and like, do we like eating pizza backwards? And I think my father said, I would submit that I do, Henry Thomas. Yeah, that's right, Daddy. You are right in there, man. You are the perfect customer. We had the same family meeting. Well, four days later, an ex-member named Neody, who we mentioned briefly in the last episode, he received a package in the mail informing him of the exit. And it was Neody who found the bodies

of 39 of his former friends decomposing in the San Diego heat. He would go as Rio de Angelo. That would be the name he would take on after all of this. And he published a book and he became the unofficial mouthpiece of Heaven's Gate immediately in the aftermath of all of this bullshit. And he also, I mean, because his whole thing was at about six weeks before, once they were getting the final plannings of the suicide, six weeks before, he started saying, like, I'm having this, like, discarnate. Discarnates are what they call the Luciferian little demons that float around, right? Okay. I am having this discarnate measures me saying, I feel I have a purpose that's past our exit. And they're like, huh, really? And he's like, yeah, there's, I just

feel like I should be going to Hawaii. Like, just not being here. These discarnates are telling me, I have further use of this vehicle that I should do. And he flipped it all to enough that they bought him a bus ticket to leave. Wow. I mean, it makes sense. They're going to want someone to tell the story at the end. Yeah. And he's not the only one. When he got to the house, he sprayed some cologne on his shirt because he said he had a weak stomach and it fucking reeked in there. He put the juke on. His vehicle had a weak stomach, yes. He put a shirt over his nose, got out his video camera, and shot the footage that we all remember from inside the house before the bodies were taken away. When the San Diego Sheriff's Department arrived, they found a house

that was in immaculate order aside of course from the 39 corpses. That's a pretty big aside. It's a mess. That is a mess. That makes it a mess. Even just one body makes it a mess. 39 bodies, four days in decomposition is definitely a mess. Even if it was just the six testicles or the 12 testicles that these people lost, that would make it a mess. Well, they'd taken out the trash, at least. They cleaned up the house. Heaven's gate. No, I know that. Who cares? It's a rental. The house is a rental. Yeah. Yeah. They cleaned it up and they even went and paid their library fees before they killed themselves. Everyone made sure to go pay their library fees. It makes me like mad. I hate that. I hate it. It's very nice. It's very nice. I still have library

books from when my childhood library. Geez. My parents' house. That is a horrible thing to admit. We got Marcus admitted to his family's hoarding guns. We're not hoarding guns. We're not hoarding guns. They have a normal Texan amount of guns. You defended. Who knows? But Henry's hoarding library books. Now anyone who was alive during this time knows that the media firestorm around the Heaven's gate suicides was fucking enormous. Oh yeah. And sure enough, everyone said exactly what members thought they would say. It's almost like they wanted them to. Yeah. People were so unsympathetic to Heaven's gate that Saturday Night Live had Will Ferrell play Marshall Applewhite in their opening sketch that very same week. It was like five days after they were found.

And they doubled down by playing a parody ad for kids using the death footage that clearly showed members wearing Nike's. And I gotta admit, 1997, I thought this was the funniest goddamn thing I'd ever seen. Oh, it's a mass suicide. It's good humor. I would say it definitely informed my later humor. Yeah, sure. Without a doubt. That was a good era for SNL actually. In other words, nobody gave a fuck about the people of Heaven's gate. Can you imagine them doing that in 1970? Can you imagine fucking, I don't know, John Belushi playing Jim Jones in 1978, four days after the guy on the massacres? No, that's not gonna fucking happen. Oh, I don't know. They went very, it's because technically what they did was in a way iconic. It was a,

it's an image that really arrests the mind and they knew what they were doing when they were doing it. They knew that the uniforms would get attention because what have they discovered? Every single time there were uniforms in person, people threw shit at them and made fun of them, right? Like they felt very, they felt very self-conscious with these uniforms. And so instead, they decided to wear the things that made them most uncomfortable as a statement to the world, as a statement of we are united. We, this is deeply planned. This is a, we came up with this months ago in order to do the perfectly orchestrated death as a final goodbye to everyone. And also, in a way, if you are a person that might have been living not the most remarkable life,

and then you join up with this, this team that has preparing you to live forever on a UFO. And in this moment of your death, you become important. In a way, you sign up, you sign up for this thing being like now at this very end, these people did a massive statement, which ended up ringing louder than anything else that they ever did within their living lives. The irony is the same people laughing at heaven's gate. And I understand where the jokes are coming from, but the same people laughing are the same people that freaked out during Y2K. They were running around with their hair on fire like they're Richard Pryor on a crack bench. They were going crazy. It's the same mentality in some ways that they, humans are very susceptible to this stuff.

Very much so. And heaven's gate, we're seen mostly as idiots, because Marshall Appalachite, to most of the world, was such an obvious nutball. You know, like you look at Marshall Appalachite and you just immediately think like, wow, how could anyone follow that fucking guy? And at first glance- You're like, get away from me. Get away from my first instinct when I see him. Just like, get away from me. I hate you. Yeah. And at first glance, like the exit statements do seem kind of smug. Like you kind of watch them be in smug. You kind of watch them be like, I know more than you do. And I think a lot of people, their first instinct was fuck these people. Sure. And it just kind of, it just rolled from there. And that's just kind of how, that's how the narrative has

been. Uh-huh. There's also fear in the laughter. Because in a way, when you do watch it, you do recognize people that you know, people that you've met, people that you've worked with. And you watch this, and you watch them on this, on these exit statements, especially if you start, if you watch them in detail, and you see them as being like, man, they went that far, that's so scary. These look like they're all joking and having a normal time. Some of them, some of them are obviously visibly upset, but yours are watching them doing like, man, they're just living normal knowing they're about to do one of the most famous group suicides ever, right? That they are, they are about to do this huge fucking thing. And they are acting totally normal about it. And you wonder,

like, does this fucking catch? Like, does this a thing that can that happen to my brother? Can that happen to my sister? And so you're laughing also as a way to relieve tension. Because it's scary to think all of these normal people could go fucking commit suicide like that. Yeah. Regardless of how the world felt about him, though, the suicides continued after the main crew did what they did. Two more members killed themselves the way the others had. But the third just fucking shot himself in the head. Yep. There was even a copycat suicide. Just a few days after the news broke, a 58 year old man living near Marysville, California left a note saying, I'm going on the spaceship with Hail Bop. And he killed himself much the same way Heaven's Gate had.

Okay. But in a moment of either cruelness or kindness, depending on your point of view, some members were made to stay behind. To this day, two members of Heaven's Gate are still maintaining the website and answering emails. Okay. However, these people do not want us to know their names. All we can say is that they live in Arizona, one works in retail, and both maintain the website exactly as it was in 1997, per Apple White's instructions. And from what they say, these people still believe 23 years later with absolute certainty that the 38 who died are now hanging out as sexy grays in space heaven. And that Marshall Apple White was indeed alien Jesus. I mean, is it that, is it that far off from mainstream religious thinking?

I don't know. Hell no. Not at all. The only difference is the spaceship, right? No, it's fucked up, right? That's the problem. It's like the ultimate catch is that you can't say it's any different than anybody blowing themselves up for Islam or killing a bunch of abortion doctors for Christianity. It's all that kind of shit where they believe in doing an extreme action in the name of their fucking theology, whatever their bullshit is. Right. I mean, you know, I still think it's, I think it's wrong. Well, you know what? I'm going to say they're up, it worked. What's to stop me from saying it all worked out. You can say that. Sure. Now, as far as the question of whether or not Marshall Apple White

is evil goes, it's hard to say because out of all the subjects we've covered over the years, this is one that possibly has the most shades of gray. And honestly, this question along with the question of what made these people so eager to do this has been driving me fucking crazy for weeks. Unfortunately, I haven't come up with an answer because I don't think there is one. The closest I can come is that a megalomaniac and a group of exceedingly broken people set up a 20 year along positive feedback loop that eventually resulted in all of their deaths because there was no graceful way to exit the situation. At the very least, we can acknowledge that 39 people committing ritualistic suicide all at once probably isn't good for the collective

unconsciousness of mankind. Anything that involves 39 deaths is not good. No. Unless it's testing a roller coaster. But as to who's fault, the whole thing is, I got no goddamn clue. Probably never will. I just don't know. Seems like Doe had something to do with it. I don't know. I blame Bonnie. I blame Bonnie. I blame the entire decade of the 1960s. The hangover was real and it led to Heaven's frickin' gate. I think that's a part of it. That is a thing. That's a part of it. Marshall Appawight is a part of it. There are all these things that all had to happen for all of this to occur. Nike's gotta go on sale. We're members of Flight Club. When was the last time Flight Club had a sale? Honestly, that would be nice. That would be nice. I guess my point is

there are no easy answers here. There's no easy answers with Heaven's gate. No. It's just, man, it is a thing that takes a microscope, though, when you start looking at this stuff and then you wonder where this, like, it's a perfect storm of all of these bullshit. And you just have to have the right group of maniacal goobers together to make it happen. It's like when we beat the Russians for the first time in the Olympics. In the hockey game. The miracle on ice. Yes. You know what, Henry? It is like that. All right, everyone. That is Heaven's gate part three. That concludes our series on Heaven's gate. Thank you all so much for listening. Completely informative. This cult, you're right. It does kind of leave you with a sour taste. It is

sad. There isn't some big, it wasn't like Umshin Rikio that wanted to channel their inner scarecrow and blow up the city. No. It's not like Jim Jones, who obviously lost his mind to drugs and literally murdered people. Yeah, it's no fun. There is no fun. But never, I guess the ultimate lesson is, as soon as someone wants you to do self-harm or harm another person, you're gone down the right path. You've gone down the wrong path. I'm sorry. Yes. Jesus. Yes. You've gone down the wrong path. Turn around. Make a U-turn. Get out of there. And just get the heck out of there, because it never ends well. I tell you one thing. Marshall, just if he just kissed me one time, we would just be running the craft store together in Ohio, but he didn't want to kiss me for some

reason. Hey, Tee, I don't know why he wouldn't want to kiss you. You sound so beautiful. Tee, did Doe and the gang make it? No. They didn't make it. He always showed up. Yeah, they fucked up. Oh, they must have done the wrong comment. They fucked up. I said, we're going to send a UFO, but be patient. Everybody's all impatient all the time. And I was like, all right. So, more burritos for me. Burrito heaven. All right, everyone. Thank you all so much for listening and keep on supporting all the shows here on The Last Podcast Network. As mentioned previously, in April, we have a book tour coming up. Super excited about that. Go out there and pre-order the book if you haven't yet. We are continuing our transfer over to Spotify. So starting February

14th, the day of love, the day of corporate love, Valentine's Day. Day of corporate love. Corporate love. Corporate love. No, remember, you can listen and download for free on Spotify. We are there. Valentine's Day. Yep. We are on our way there. We are saving episode 400 to be completely exclusive on Spotify. The work has been brewing. The stew has been simmering. And I think you're going to enjoy it. Next week, we've got a Relax Fit episode that you will enjoy. And then after that, we begin, we wonder into the new frontier of the 400s of episodes of Last Podcast on the left. The 400s. And it is going to be, what we're doing for episode 400 is like, this is the big one. And so make sure to go out there.

I'm just going to say hug a loved one. Hug a loved one. I mean, seriously, hug a loved one. Also, be nice to nerds. Oh, you have to be nice to nerds. But also, nerds, be nice. This whole idea that nerds aren't nice is a lie. But just one more small thing with Heaven's Gate. I think if a lot of these people, if just people in their everyday life would have reached out and been nice and just kind of, I don't know, invited them along, do a couple of things and showed them that this world was not a Luciferian hell, maybe things would have turned out different. You know, maybe they wouldn't have gotten, maybe they wouldn't have all died. But still, I guess the lesson with Heaven's Gate is just, I don't know, be kind to the socially awkward

and to the strange and to the odd and to the weird and to the misfits, you know. Absolutely. Everyone just be nice to each other. Our jobs as big lads are to talk to the quiets and bring them along. We got to bring the quiets and include the quiets. Even if they don't want to, they appreciate the invitation. Some quiets like to stay quiet. Don't force a quiet if they don't want to be loud. Also, quiets are not a term. Sometimes it's fun to grab a quiet. You want to grab a quiet now? Pull it on the street and drag them around. But I also understand quiets have their place. Yes. Yes. Also, people of Heaven's Gate, some of them did not want to be reached out to, but send an invite. If you get no response, you get no response. Yeah.

All right, everyone. Well, thank you all so much for listening to the last podcast on the left. And you know what? We're damn near episode 400, which is just incredible. We've been doing this for so many years now. It's weird. So maybe we'll do a little reflection. And thank you all so much for supporting our show from literally one listener all the way up to where we are now. It's really, it's awesome to be nearing episode 400 is an absolute miracle. So thank you all so much. Oh, right. That's like close to like 900 hours of bullshit. Yeah. Right. That we have been screaming for a decade. Yeah. And you guys have been there the entire time. A lot of you have and people that are that have just started listening. It means a lot. And so these are

the just started listening. We're going to be releasing our vehicles to go to the next level. Listen, we are Spotify thing. This is a whole Spotify thing. We're all going to be releasing our vehicles. But in the way I was talking about, we're all going to shit in a bucket. Oh, very exciting. In front of the White House. All right, everyone. It's going to be fun. That will be fun. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Again, let's do a magustalations to one and all. Magustalations to one and all. To you and to yours. Very nice. Hail me. All right. Hey, what's up, everyone? How are you doing? Ben Kessel here with Katie Dirks. Let you know about kind of fun. It's the LPN wrestling podcast. And dare I say, it's kind of

fun bringing you all the news you need to know about wrestling to keep you up to date. Yeah, we cover all sorts of news from across the wrestling industry. Keep you updated. All the hot goss, all the fun stuff, everything you need to know. So check out kind of fun on the LPN network. It's kind of fun. Hey, everyone. How you doing? My name is Ed Larson. And you might remember my big thick voice from the round table. A gentleman. I got another show on the last podcast network called the brighter side of my co-host is the lovely Amber Nelson all the way from South Louisiana and Saudi Arabia. Hasalaamu alaikum, y'all. We are a cynic's look at optimism in this world. You need to stay positive. No matter what, life can give you half a bag of chips. That's okay. You

don't need to be in a full bag anyway. Our show is going Spotify exclusive on Valentine's Day. That's February 14th for everyone that doesn't have a woman that makes them buy them stuff. Or if you're alone and you don't want to feel like you're alone, listen to our melodious voices. New releases and the entire catalog for our show will be on Spotify. Spotify accounts are free and easy to create. And all of our episodes are already there. You can download the episodes with a free account. Just do it already, baby. Follow the brighter side on Spotify to get new episodes as soon as they come out. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one

you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.